Why don’t people hire me, Jim? I get asked that question a lot. Here’s what you need to know, in order to regularly get hired by great clients or sell to equally great customers.

I need to start with a simple question: can you guess what every single one of your prospective clients or customers has in common?

Here it is:

They can all, easily afford your products or services! All of them. Every. Single. One.

Here’s why people really don’t hire you or buy from you.

1. You’re attracting enquiries from the wrong people.
2. You haven’t given them a powerful enough reason to buy from you or hire .
3. They don’t trust you enough, so they don’t believe your message.

Let’s look at these 3 challenges in a little more detail. Plus, how to overcome them and make massively more sales.

Let’s go!

1. People won’t buy from you because you’re attracting the wrong people

No matter how amazing your products are. No matter how outstanding your services are. You’ll never achieve the results you want, if you’re talking to the wrong people.

Let’s say you provide a premium quality service, which rightly has a premium price tag. If so, you’re wasting your time marketing to the low-fee crowd.

Yes, very occasionally you may be able to change someone’s world view. However, you’re far more likely to sell your premium services, if you market only to those who already value premium service.

The key phrase here is: Market to the unhappy, NOT the uninterested.

In other words, using the above example you’d market your premium service to those who are unhappy with their current situation, and who value a premium service.

It’s never ever about the money. It’s always true that your prospective customers can afford your products or services.

And here’s why.

If someone genuinely can’t afford what you offer, they were never a prospective customer in the first place! Think about it. For someone to be a prospective customer, they need to have the ability to pay you.

So, identify who your ideal prospect is. Then, make that select group of great people the sole focus of all your marketing. The alternative is to do what most failing business owners do, and try to be all things to all people. That approach can’t work. It will drive you nuts and lose you a fortune.

2. People don’t hire you because you haven’t given them a powerful enough reason

This one is huge. No. It’s bigger than that!

We need to start here by looking at motivation. The word motivation comes from a fusion of the words: motive and action.

When the motive (or reason) is powerful enough, we take action. In contrast most small business marketing lacks motivational power. It’s generic. It’s predictable. And as you’d expect, it lacks the impact that’s essential, to inspire people to buy from them.

Why do so many businesses rely on weak marketing that fails to generate the results they need? Having transformed the marketing results of small business owners for more than two decades, here’s what I’ve found. And it’s something I see examples of pretty-much every working day of my life.

It’s the business owner’s attitude to marketing. They’ll happily pay an expert to style their hair, but they’ll willingly risk their financial future with lousy, ineffective, DIY marketing.

They honestly believe that dabbling with their future is safer, than hiring an expert to do things correctly. They tend not to admit it publicly, because in many cases they don’t admit it to themselves. In conversation, you find that this happens when the business owner still operates and makes decisions, from an employee mindset. They see risk in all the wrong places. Unaware that the riskiest thing a business owner can do, is avoid expert help when it’s clearly needed.

However, this is great news if you want your business to thrive.

Really, Jim?

Why?

Because you can massively outperform the vast majority of your competitors, simply by being professional enough to invest in expert marketing help. It’s the easiest win in business. Low risk. Massive return.

3. People don’t buy from you because they trust you yet, or believe your message

For your marketing to work, people need to believe it. They need to trust you enough, to accept that what you’re telling them is true.

Sadly, many sales are lost this way, even though the marketing message is completely true and honest. The provider really is as good as they say. Maybe even better then they say in their marketing.

So, why does this happen? And more importantly my friend, what can you do about it?

Trust is lost when there’s a disconnect between.

• What the marketing message says.
• And how the prospective client feels.

Here are just 2 very common examples, to explain the point.

• Promising an expert service, yet charging average fees. Your prospective clients have been told since they were kids, that when something sounds too good to be true, it is too good to be true. So they don’t believe it. ‘High quality’ and ‘cheap fees’ are opposite ends of the spectrum. Putting them together creates massive doubt in what you’re saying.
• Promising a professional service, yet having an amateur looking brand. It’s like a restaurant serving a delicious meal, but on a dirty plate! It totally destroy trust. And it does so literally in seconds. Once they’re gone, they’re gone. You lost the sale or new client needlessly. And you won’t even know.

If you notice anything that could cause a stranger to get a negative impression of your business, fix it. And fix it correctly.

Why?

Because while it’s broken it’s losing you money and opportunities. While it’s broken, the lifeblood of your business is broken. And to ignore it is like ignoring black smoke bellowing from the back of your car, hoping the car will ‘just get better’. When in reality that car will soon grind to a halt.

Summing up: Why people don’t buy from you

Those 3 examples of why people don’t buy from you are easy wins. They’re easy, because with the correct approach, they can easily and quickly be overcome, allowing you to blow the lid off your potential.

What you can’t do, is carry on as you are in 2024 and expect things to magically improve. You’d think that goes without saying, right? Yet time and again, we see small businesses that still face ongoing struggles, for years and years.

Here’s just one example, from an email I received.

The guy who wrote to me is in his late 60’s. He’s worked hard all his life. He told me that he’d never made any “real money” and that he kept waiting for things to improve. With some expert help, he could have quit working decades ago and been very comfortable now. However, he explained that he still needs to work in order to pay the bills. It’s heartbreaking, because it’s easily avoidable.

As Einstein said, “Insanity is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results.” In business we simply say, “more of the same leads to more of the same”.

In short, if you want massively better marketing results, financial security and everything that goes with it in 2024, you have to improve things accordingly.

Photo by 愚木混株 cdd20

When a prospective client or customer decides not to hire us or buy from us, how can we turn their no into a yes? And how can we do this, even when they’ve had their objections or concerns fully answered and they still say ‘no’?

Faced with that kind of rejection, there are 3 broad ways we can choose to respond.

1. We could just leave it. They’ve made their decision. End of story.
2. We could reply and let them know why they’re wrong and make sure they know they’ve made a big mistake. If we know the competitor who won, we could also include all the bad stuff we know about the lousy dirt-bag.
3. Or we could contact them and be more genial, positive and helpful to them, than if we had won the contract!

Yes, it’s number 3 I’m going to focus on. Because it’s exceptionally effective.

Turning a prospect’s no into a yes

Imagine how the following might work, as a massively more effective way to respond to a prospect’s ‘no’.

• You contact the prospect and thank them for the time they spent with you or with your proposal.
• You also let them know, up-front, that you respect their decision. This is important. It shows you’re not doubting their ability as a decision maker.
• You add that as a result of their decision, you’re working to improve your proposal or presentation.
• You then find something generous to say about the competitor who won, so long as it’s true. Nothing sarcastic or tongue-in-cheek, but truly gracious.
• And finally, you let them know that if they ever need anything, you’re there for them and happy to help.

Here’s what we know for absolute certain. Very, very few people respond with that type of good-natured, yet professional strategy. But when they do, they get remembered for the very best of reasons. It’s exceptionally powerful and I’ve lost count of how many times I’ve seen it work.

Here’s what can happen

Here are just some of the outcomes this can generate for people, who were originally rejected.

In many cases, the prospect who rejected them suddenly wonders if they made the wrong decision, in choosing the other provider. I’ve personally seen this result in an immediate about-turn, with the rejected provider winning the deal.

Much more commonly, I’ve seen the rejected provider given the contract, as soon as the winning provider screws up!

It’s as if the prospect is unconsciously looking for their original choice to fail, after becoming fully aware what a wonderful provider they rejected. By respecting the prospect’s decision and leaving the door wide open to them, the rejected provider makes it extremely easy for the prospect to contact them.

But that’s not all!

Ask anyone who uses this approach and they’ll confirm that it also results in a number of referrals, from the prospects who didn’t change their mind about hiring the rejected provider.

I’ve used this strategy for years and seen amazing results. My clients have, too. So give it a try. You literally have nothing to lose and everything to gain.

Photo by Jim Wilson on Unsplash

Right now, there’s a motivated sales force out there, who happily work for free and are waiting to tell people all about you and the services you provide.

I came up with this idea 20 years ago, after studying the world’s top industrial designers and commercial designers. It blew me away.

Here’s what I discovered.

One of the attributes of commercially successful design, is that the object needs to be reflective. In other words, it causes us to think about it. To reflect on its utility, uniqueness or beauty.

I’ve found that a commercially successful business also needs to be reflective. A business that’s useful has utility. A business that’s meaningfully different is unique. And a business that runs smoothly is a thing of beauty.

Allow me to explain why this should matter to you and your business.

Your unpaid salespeople are waiting

Designers know that reflective products almost sell themselves.

For instance, my wife bought me some Apple AirPods just after they launched. Their unique look caused total strangers to ask me about them. Their ability to instantly connect wirelessly, inspired me to tell my friends about them.

Just by owning them and using them I became an unpaid salesperson for the product.

Take a look at your products, services or business model and look for ways to make things more reflective. How many unpaid salespeople are there, who’ll spring into action as soon as you give them something reflective to share with their friends? Give it a try and find out.

Photo by Maria Fernanda Pissioli on Unsplash